The game of Wordle now has a human editor that will curate the five-letter Wordle answers. This means that some five-letter Wordle puzzles will now be themed around certain holidays, and some players are not happy about it.
Beginning November 7, 2022, the New York Times Games announced that Wordle would now have an editor. NYT Games constructor Tracy Bennett was put in charge of curating the Wordle of the day, and players would be getting a hand-picked puzzle instead of a random one. This has caused the New York Times Games to change the Wordle word a few times this month, and fans on the Wordle subreddit have been fairly vocal about the changes.
Also an editor for the New York Times Games Crosswords, Tracy Bennett has been curating Wordle words for about a week now. This has caused some players to complain about the less-random nature of the answers. And it all started with the change to the answer on November 11, 2022. Reddit user u/Niicodemus posted that they have a script to alert them whenever the answer list is changed. This user has noted a sudden surge in these alterations. Instead of the list that Wordle was fed from before, another redditor named trickman01 noted that new "individual JSON files" containing the word of the day would now be "delivered daily according to the time on your PC." This allows the New York Times to change the answers on a daily basis instead of having to alter the entire code.
In order to theme the November 11 Wordle word around the holiday in the United States called Veterans Day, Tracey Bennet appears to have altered the original intended answer of UNITE to the more thematic word MEDAL. The answer to the Wordle for Thanksgiving Day on November 24, 2022, which will not be posted here to prevent spoilers, has also been changed to make the word more befitting the American Thanksgiving holiday.
"This means any tools or clones that used the old answer list will no longer match," continues u/Niicodemus on their reddit post. "This effectively gives the NYT the ability to change the word any time they want with almost no notice." Other redditors, having noted the changes, are adding their opinions to the new updates to the Wordle puzzles. "If the words really are themed, then that completely destroys the point of the game by making it predictable," says u/pianist-on-edge, agreeing with several other users on the social media platform.
There are those on the other side of the fence as well, including u/NightlyNorth, who states they have "mixed feelings" about the changes to the November Wordles. "It might make it more interesting as the goal now on many days would be to guess what the editor might have picked." They went on to note, however, that a human won't be as good at randomizing words as an algorithm can.
Regardless of a player's feelings, a few have noticed that their answers no longer match the general public's answers. Just like back in February when the original powerlanguage version was exchanged for the New York Times' version, players are getting different answers depending on the version of Wordle they are playing. This most likely has something to do with old cached versions of the word list in browsers, which can cause some inconsistencies.
Wordle is available for any browser and the New York Times Crossword app.
Source: Reddit, New York Times